[TPP-Draft] 2026 ZKsync Protocol & Network Development Allocation

Token Mechanics Draft TPPs
23

I want to be clear from the start: if I were only concerned about making money, I could simply short ZK instead of writing this post. The reason I’m speaking up is because I genuinely support the ZK team and believe in the long-term vision of this project. I’m willing to hold for the long term, as I think ZK has the potential to bring meaningful progress to the blockchain space.

However, I’ve noticed that many long-term supporters, including myself, have been feeling increasingly disheartened by the team’s recent behavior. While I support the current proposal in principle, I believe this is not the right time to ask the community to bear the full cost through additional token issuance.

At a moment when community sentiment is already fragile, it would mean a lot if the team could also contribute a portion of the funding themselves — even something like 10% — as a gesture of shared responsibility. This would not only show the team’s commitment but also help restore some of the trust and warmth that many supporters are currently lacking.

I hope the team can seriously consider this perspective. We are ultimately on the same side and all want to see ZK succeed in the long run.

In my view, genuine community growth doesn’t necessarily require spending large amounts of money on marketing campaigns or brand building. From what we’ve seen so far, these investments have not delivered proportional returns. Instead of trying to convert people who have little interest in ZK, I believe it would be far more effective to treat those who already care about the project with sincerity and warmth. When supporters feel genuinely valued, that positive sentiment can snowball quickly from person to person. While this may not be the only solution, I believe it is a meaningful starting point for rebuilding a healthier and more united community.

24

I’m surprised that this proposal was speedrunned… Already onchain. I just no words seriously. Community scared as never and telling this to the team, but they like not listening at all… They instantly sent this proposal to onchain, with no regrets. Funny thing, that the real important proposals that might bring not only bearish perspectives might be delayed for months, or even more, while toxic proposals gets approve by days maximum. Its not a draft at all, It’s already been decided, and here we just have illusion that we can give a feedback, but in reality our opinion is useless and probably will be ignored… Sad. Very sad.

26

Stop the Illusion: Matter Labs is Treating Governance Like a Dictatorship

It is clear as day now: Matter Labs has no interest in community feedback. They didn’t listen to anyone. They completely ignored the concerns raised by the community who pleaded for a shared burden and a pause to rebuild trust.

Instead of treating us like partners, they treated us like a rubber stamp.
The Harsh Reality

Zero Respect for the Community: Vital, positive proposals that could actually help the ecosystem are dragged out and delayed for months. But a toxic proposal that dilutes holders and hurts sentiment? Speedrun straight on-chain within hours.

The Illusion of Choice: This isn’t a “draft” or a “discussion.” It is a forced mandate. They provided an absolute illusion of feedback while already deciding our opinion was useless.

Zero Shared Risk: While the community is hurting and sentiment is fragile, the team refuses to contribute even a fraction of their own funding to show solidarity. They expect the community to bear 100% of the cost.

A Call to Action for the ZK Community

A decentralized network cannot function under a dictatorship. If we accept this behavior now, we set a precedent that our voices mean absolutely nothing.

We need to revolt against this top-down enforcement.

Do not let them ignore us. We need every single community member, validator, and token holder to mobilize, reject this blatant power move, and VOTE NO on-chain. If they won’t listen to our words in the forum, we must force them to listen to our power at the ballot.

Reject the dilution. Reject the dictatorship. Vote NO.

27

Thank you everyone for the continued discussion. There are some common themes across the responses, so we’ve added additional context below. Some questions have been repeated and we will link out to them as needed.

On protocol development to date

Matter Labs has been operating for seven years, since 2019. Protocol development has been funded throughout that period through corporate financing, including roughly two years post-TGE without any governance token allocation. The record of what that funding built is public: the first ZK rollup on Ethereum (2019), the first ZK EVM at production scale (2023), the launch of the ZKsync Elastic Network (2024) with public chains including Sophon, Abstract, GRVT and more, the Atlas architecture now powering institutional deployments (2025), Prividium as a production-ready platform for regulated institutions (2025), Airbender, the world’s fastest open-source RISC-V zkVM, currently #1 on eth_proofs (2025), and the live institutional deployments named in the proposal (ongoing, 2026). Progress is documented in the quarterly deliverables reports.

On market conditions and sequencing

The timing concern is fair to raise. The cap is fixed: the proposal contains no mechanism to increase it, and does not return to governance for additional issuance to compensate for price movement. Conversion to operating capital happens only where required, and is expected to occur primarily through OTC and structured channels; no commitment is made to any specific volume, schedule, or counterparty.

On sequencing revenue before funding: the revenue mechanisms several delegates have asked to see established first are the funded work, namely v31 interop fees (currently expected onchain in mid-June), the audited fee-flow contract on Era, and the Network Fee Pool being structured for governance consideration.

On architectural evolution and decentralization

Earlier architectural concepts such as ZKPorter were superseded as the architecture matured; that direction converged into the current stack and the Atlas coordination layer. Stream 1 of this allocation advances decentralized sequencing and prover networks toward Stage 1+ rollup maturity.

Other questions previously addressed

The proposal outlines that any tokens received under this allocation will not be used to vote on any ZKsync governance proposal. Delegation and voting are onchain and publicly auditable, and Token Assembly revocation of any monthly capped minter runs through the standard governance process open to all token holders and delegates.

Questions on token mechanics, the USD reference figure, the existing TGE vesting schedule, OTC conversion principles, and the venture funding figure ($258M) are addressed in the June 4 reply above.

1 Like
28

@Anwar Tbh I just too tired to do boycot, or something similar. It’s just sad that team with good technology have a greedy market strategy that ruin all their perspectivites. But it is what it is. As I said before: this proposal was one way road I think, and I think this road leads not to a good way. After this proposal my faith completely killed to this project. Probably Im not alone with this feelings. Good luck to all, you are need it.

29

@BE4_2_L8

I completely understand the exhaustion. Looking at a 90%+ drop while watching the team fast-track a proposal that dilutes us even further feels like a punch to the gut. It is draining to care about a project more than the people running it seem to.

But apathy and structural confusion are exactly what they are betting on.

Look at the bigger picture and how calculated this is. Why did they recently push for a 3-month staking setup with mandatory delegation? And notice the trick: even if you unstake, your delegation persists unless you manually go through an extra step to undelegate.

That isn’t a mistake; it’s an intentional friction trap. They knew exactly what toxic proposal they were about to drop. They counted on people unstaking, walking away in frustration, and leaving their voting power unknowingly active and concentrated in the hands of insiders and delegates who will rubber-stamp this dilution. They engineered a system where your silence or exhaustion actively votes for them.

They chose to speedrun this on-chain because they hoped we would be too tired, too defeated, and too disheartened to stand up and say no. They want us to believe this is a “one-way road” so we just stand aside and let them march over us.

But this isn’t just about a proposal anymore—this is our hard-earned money being forcefully devalued. We cannot afford to give up just because they made the process exhausting. That is a tactical play to silence us.

If we walk away now, they win. They get to treat the treasury like a personal fund while the community bears 100% of the risk.

If we vote NO, we draw a line in the sand. We show them that a decentralized network cannot be run like a dictatorship.

To you, and to everyone else reading this who feels completely drained: Don’t let them kill your fire. This is exactly when your voice matters most. We don’t need a massive, exhausting boycott—we just need a unified, definitive NO at the ballot box.

Let’s turn that sadness and frustration into action. Turn up, log in, and Vote NO on-chain. Let’s show them the community isn’t a rubber stamp.

30

I’m going to vote against this proposal. If you’re against it as well, feel free to delegate your vote to my delegate.

2 Likes
31

Thanks for stepping up @nanostrategy.eth ! Love seeing the community unite on this. I’ve got my own voting power locked and loaded to vote NO directly, but glad we are driving toward the same goal. Let’s do this

32

I want to start by saying that I support the overall technical direction and roadmap of ZKsync. However, I have some concerns regarding the proposed budget allocation in this proposal.

While I understand that development requires funding, I hope the team can provide more clarity on whether each expense item is truly necessary at the proposed amount, and whether there is room for reduction. Additionally, it would be helpful if the team could explain the contingency plan in case the token price drops significantly. For example, if ZK experiences a sharp decline and the monthly allocation falls short (such as only receiving $300,000 instead of the expected $1 million), how would the team cover the remaining funding gap?

I believe it is important for the team to address the sustainability of this budget under different market conditions before moving forward with such a proposal. A clear explanation would help ease community concerns and build greater trust.

1 Like
33

@wjfwd1987 your questions are logical, structured, and fair. Any responsible team operating a true DAO would pause, thank you for the feedback, and provide a detailed risk-mitigation plan.

But here is the devastating truth: they don’t care, and they aren’t listening.

While you were writing out these thoughtful concerns about budget sustainability, market crashes, and capital efficiency, Matter Labs had already pushed the submit button hours earlier to force this proposal straight on-chain. They didn’t wait for your questions. They didn’t wait to address the funding gaps. They didn’t even give the community a couole of days to digest the “draft” before launching it as a binding vote.

The harsh reality we all have to face right now is that our opinions, our questions, and our hard-earned money were thrown directly into the garbage the moment this thread was created.

This isn’t a governance process; it’s a corporate mandate masquerading as a democracy. We’ve already seen how they handle genuine scrutiny , by blocking accounts and censoring community members who dare to question their financial models or demand accountability.

They are treating us like a rubber stamp. They expect us to silently bear 100% of the dilution risk while they answer to nobody. Asking them for “clarity” at this point is giving them a pass they don’t deserve. They have shown us exactly who they are through their actions: a centralized dictatorship that views retail investors as a bottomless ATM.

If they refuse to respect our voices in the forum, we must force them to respect our power at the ballot. Do not let this insult slide. For all these reason I will Vote NO on-chain and i encourage everyone who bought tokens with hard earnd capital to do the same.

34

I wish to state that VC funding was in fact $458 million:

Matter Labs (the company behind ZKsync / zkSync) has raised a total of $458 million in VC funding.

Funding Breakdown

This total comes from the following rounds (last major round closed in November 2022):

Series A + Seed: ~$8 million (earlier rounds, around 2021)

Series B: $50 million (November 2021, led by a16z)

Series C: $200 million (November 2022, co-led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Variant, Andreessen Horowitz / a16z, and others)

The $458 million figure includes a dedicated ~$200 million ecosystem fund component tied to the Series C round. Official announcements and reporting (Matter Labs blog, CoinDesk, TechCrunch, The Block) consistently cite this total.

Matter Labs blog itself says so: https://blog.matter-labs.io/announcing-200-million-in-new-funding-to-accelerate-the-zksync-mission-a9d59c1583c8

3 Likes
35

@Golem This narrative doesn’t add up. You’re flexing that Matter Labs didn’t take an allocation for two years, but you’re completely ignoring the elephant in the room: The ZKsync Association was allocated 6.14 billion tokens at TGE to fund ecosystem development and those were your own words while responding to the post Serious Concerns About Treasury Spending, Transparency, and the Direction of the ZKsync Ecosystem.

So answer a simple question: Why isn’t the requested funding for this 12-month roadmap coming out of those 6.7 billion existing tokens?

Why is the solution to mint extra tokens and force community dilution via TPP-18 instead of dipping into the massive war chest already set aside for the protocol? It looks less like “decentralized governance” and more like protecting the Association’s stash while the community pays the price through inflation. Prove to us why the existing allocation isn’t enough before asking for more.

4 Likes
36

At the very least we should be waiting for the impact of tpp 16 and the impact of interop fees on the ZK token to materialise after 24 June before making any concrete decisions.

This proposal is rushed and inappropriate based on the timelines.

1 Like
37

Gm, two factual points worth correcting, and a pointer on a third.

On the existing ZKsync Association allocation

The ~6.1B figure allocated at TGE is the Token Assembly’s mintable supply, not a pool of liquid tokens sitting in an account that can be spent or dipped into. Those tokens don’t exist until a governance proposal authorizes a capped minter to create them.

That is how ZKsync governance has operated since day one. Every TPP, including this one, is how that allocation is accessed, following a successful Token Assembly vote. Across 17 TPP programs over roughly two years, ~618M ZK has been approved for minting and ~328M ZK has actually been minted: about 5.35% of the 6.1B mintable supply. The ZKsync Association maintains a public dashboard of all TPPs and their minting status.

TPP-18 draws from that same allocation through the standard governance process, not on top of it.

On the $458M figure

Matter Labs raised ~$258M in venture capital across rounds: seed and Series A together (~$8M), $50M Series B (2021), and $200M Series C (November 2022, co-led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly). The 2022 $458M headline also included a $200M commitment from BitDAO which was not venture capital raised by Matter Labs and did not ultimately proceed. The linked blog post is from that 2022 announcement; current ZKsync blog content is here.

Previously addressed

Questions on price decline contingency are addressed in the June 4 reply: the allocation is ZK-denominated with a fixed cap if the price falls, the realized value falls with it, and there is no mechanism to mint more to compensate.

3 Likes
38

Thank you for your response. I found your answer very informative. However, there is one important point that many of us are concerned about which wasn’t fully addressed. If the token price declines significantly and ZK is unable to complete the work before the window closes, does the team have any contingency plans in place?

1 Like
39

@Anwar - For clarification, the *Token Assembly (that is one of the 3 governance bodies supported by the ZKsync Association) was granted 29.3% (or 6.146M ZK) at TGE as noted on the ZK Token page on the docs. This allocation is fully managed by the Token Assembly via the onchain governance process. You can read more at docs.zknation.io.

:information_source: I would also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone of the ZK Nation Code of Conduct while forumulating responses.

2 Likes
40

Given that the L2 thesis is largely dead, and retail is steering clear of Crypto, this seems the most logical step towards focusing on an aspect of the market which is viable with the existing infra plus a realistic lift. A lot will not be happy about the effect on the token, but the reality is, if zk doesnt act soon, the token will be worthless into the near future.

We have to support the Labs Team in delivering the next phase of ZKsync, its crunch time.

Factory Labs supports this proposal.

4 Likes
41

There was no need to drop the Code of Conduct here with my name tagged in that exact post. We are not in a classroom, and I haven’t violated any rules! I am simply expressing a valid governance disagreement on this proposal.

1 Like
42

Thank you for reading this. I’ve been observing the discussions in the community and noticed that many misunderstandings appear to stem from information asymmetry rather than from bad intentions.

Because ZKsync’s system is quite complex, with a large amount of technical and governance-related information scattered across different places, it’s often difficult for token holders to quickly and accurately understand the project’s current status and direction. This issue becomes even more pronounced during difficult market conditions, making it harder to build consensus within the community.

I believe that improving information accessibility would benefit both the team and the community. Therefore, I’d like to suggest that the team consider developing a RAG-based tool or an AI assistant tailored for ZKsync. Such a tool could help organize existing information and make it easier for holders to understand proposals, technical updates, and governance matters.

This is a constructive suggestion, and I hope the team can seriously consider it.

1 Like
43

The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Manugotsuka, and is based on their combined research, fact-checking, and discussion.

We voted FOR.

We recognize Matter Labs as a highly capable team with a strong track record of execution across the ZKsync stack. We also think Prividium has shown real institutional traction, which makes the direction of this proposal compelling.

That said, this is a large allocation, and that naturally raises the bar for accountability. The monthly capped minter structure and the ability for governance to revoke future minters are meaningful safeguards, but we would still like to see more concrete KPIs attached to the program. For a request of this size, success should be easier for the Token Assembly to evaluate over time.

For us, the key is not to ask Matter Labs to remove all uncertainty from the strategy. Institutional adoption is inherently difficult to predict, and some level of execution risk is unavoidable. What matters is making the progress of that strategy easier for governance to observe. The monthly capped minter structure gives the Token Assembly real optionality, but that optionality becomes much more useful if delegates have clear reporting on what is working, what is not, and how the allocation is translating into network activity over time.

That said, we’d like to note that, in terms of goals and scope, this proposal is much more concrete than some of the similar requests we’ve seen in this area recently.

3 Likes